Paphos Life

A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 90th birthday. Without beating around the bush, I am an old has-been, but I hope that my past life has been acceptable and, who knows?, I may have many days, weeks, months or even a year or two left and I hope to spend them profitably. A large part of my active life was working for the environment for the Swiss government, the United Nations Environment Programme and various other official bodies. In a way, this post is my apology.

Many years ago, longer than I care to remember, I started a series of websites covering many subjects related to nature, energy, the environment etc. Obviously, since those days, much water has passed under the bridge and many of the things discussed within these websites may no longer be fully valid. On the other hand, on rereading my efforts, I realise that much of what I wrote in those days can be applied today, provided you discount changes of a political nature.

The websites that I published were designed to be practical, covering many aspects of the subjects but, in those days, we tried to be pragmatic rather than snazzy, so they may appear to you today to be old-fashioned and boring – probably because they are old-fashioned and boring.

http://bnellis.eu/global/

Okay? Yes, I did do something rather snazzy. I published a video showing my beliefs in those days. I just looked through it, after donkey's years, and surprised myself at having published it. In modern terms, with one exception, the subjects covered in this video are nearly all valid today. The exception is that at that time I underestimated photovoltaics by a long, long chalk; I was certainly wrong there!

http://bnellis.eu/green/credovid.html

Below this video, there are several links to more generalised small websites, covering many subjects such as Cyprus nature (unfortunately incomplete), the current weather, what was relevant to Cyprus and so on. I make no apology for the fact that a small number of the links do not work, possibly because the target was written 15 or 20 years ago.

I really do hope that these ramblings of a nonagenarian will be of interest to some of you. If so, enjoy them

By the sound of it Devil you have had an interesting & fulfilling life. My sister in Australia is 90 this Friday & is mentally as sharp as a button but the same cannot be said for her physical ability. I look forward to the links you have provided but suspect some scientific explanations may be beyond me

It is never too late if one admits that he made mistakes in the past and concerning photovoltaics: there were a lot of changes in the last decade or so. Not only the price for PV modules is much lower - they are also much more efficient now, in the same time their quality improved also a lot. What a pity that you only now decided finally to have your own PV system installed and not years ago...

I installed my first PV system 25 years ago and learned a lot by doing it. It was a stand alone installation with no grid connection however much more complicated than a net-metering everybody is installing nowadays.

Max

Happy birthday, lang may your lung reap!

Belated birthday wishes!

cyprusmax47 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 7:25 pm What a pity that you only now decided finally to have your own PV system installed and not years ago...
Max

Not "only now", Max. I made the decision in 2019 but it has taken a good three years to get this far and it still is not installed. This is largely due to EAC bureaucracy combined with a bad choice (by me) of a contractor, coronavirus et cetera. The current situation is that I have had for some time 4 kW of panels sitting on my roof, unconnected, combined with lost files. I can only hope that the big switch will be pulled in the coming months while the argy-bargy goes on.